Having a smartphone is amazing. You can replace so many things with one, and they will do so much for you. I recently decided to use my phone as a fitness tracker, something I can definitely see happening in schools, with the large focus on obesity and fitness. I downloaded the free Runkeeper app. While I usually use my Cowon S9 for my playlists, I decided to take my EVO and track my run with the GPS. I did this for a few runs lately and LOVE what I get. In the image you can see my distance, the duration, my pace and speed. How many calories I burned as well as a Google Map showing my run. SO COOL! And this is just one of the apps out there that do this. You can also measure bicycling and other things. Great tool to use in your class or for your personal life.

Yup, HP will kill off the TouchPad. No surprises here. When I reviewed it here (http://www.k12opensourceclassroom.org/?p=1314), even the title of my post, ‘Not FTW’ indicated the issues with this product. From the sluggishness of performance to the less than intuitiveness of the OS, I did not then expect a lot out of it. It does surprise me that HP wants to spin off the entire tablet and desktop lines though. We actually use HP ProCurve’s networking equipment, so maybe they want to focus on it, but it does surprise me when they are the leading desktop manufacturer in the world.

This just shows the tablet race is a two horse race: Apple and Google. iOS and Android. No room for WebOS, Windows, or RIM. So let’s see what happens now with this race, with Google’s recent acquisition of Motorola for their patents and the ‘Axis of Evil’ consortium purchasing patents. Regardless, one has already bitten the dust.

Free as in beer is always a good thing in my book. Karen from K12 Handhelds recently released a number of new eBooks under a Creative Commons license on her site (http://k12opened.com/ebooks/). Definitely a good find! I once took a workshop with her on podcasting years ago, and she definitely produces some high quality content. I would go check out these web, Kindle, or ePub formatted books.